


To Return

by The_Peridot_Shade



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Closure, Force Ghosts, Gen, Grief, Not A Fix-It, Time Travel, but I'm not that optimistic, due to butterfly effect, not really anyway, you could theoretically argue it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 07:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15552381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Peridot_Shade/pseuds/The_Peridot_Shade
Summary: Obi-Wan inexplicably finds himself back in his 25-year-old body just as Maul strikes the final blow against his Master.  Perhaps this will change the fate of the galaxy, perhaps it will not—Obi-Wan only knows he has the chance to have a conversation long delayed.





	To Return

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old one-shot I found while going through my WIP folder. Since I'm not in a writing mood but still feel like sharing my work, have a bit of angst and emotional closure!

Obi-Wan is tired.  He’s not sure exactly why—he hasn’t had a body in nearly half a decade—but he feels weighed down by nonexistent limbs and a deep ache in bones that were subsumed into the Force years ago.  Strangely enough, the not-physical sensations only seem to be getting stronger as the minutes pass, now accompanied by a burning he remembers as belonging to overexerted muscles.

Obi-Wan extends his senses outward.  There are mechanical energy sources before and behind him, a positioning that puzzles him because direction has been more theoretical than not since his death.  Beyond the first source is a swirling mass of dark Force energy and organic lifeforce, a vaguely familiar one at that.  Obi-Wan presumes it to be a Sith or Sith-trained being, not Vader, whose energy is an inferno contained by cracked glass after decades of servitude to Sidious.  It is not Sidious himself, whom Obi-Wan has sensed fully only rarely, but knows to be more akin to a creeping miasma of malicious intent.  Dooku had been more controlled—eerie shadows cast by hearthfire—and Ventress had been coldly millitant, blades and shields of darkened ice.  That left only two he had known: Maul and Savage.  This must be Maul, for he bore none of the poisonous green cast of Nightsister interference.

Well, it was apparently a day for impossibilities, so Obi-Wan attempted to open his eyes for the first time in years.  It, surprisingly, worked, and if that alone were not shocking enough, the sight that met his eyes certainly was.

Through the red haze of a ray shield, Obi-Wan saw a scene straight out of his worst memories.  Maul was indeed present—withdrawing one end of his double-bladed saber from the stomach of Qui-Gon Jinn.

Obi-Wan knows that under other circumstances (and, indeed, the first time this scene played out) he would be screaming at this point, but his vocal chords don’t seem to be cooperating at the moment.  Maybe he’ll try again later.  For now, though, the shields are cycling open and his instincts take over.

He doesn’t register much of the fight that follows, just falls into the patterns of Soresu without thought.  Except, not really, because it doesn’t feel quite right—his body responding in ways more suited to Ataru.  He gives up trying to direct the duel and simply reacts, waiting for Maul to make a mistake. 

For all the awkwardness of it, though, it works—Maul is not as skilled as in his more recent recollections of the Sith, and the change in style seems to have confused him.  Obi-Wan finds himself with an unconscious and armless Nightbrother in short order.

“That was easier than the last time,” Obi-Wan muses aloud.  The sound of his own voice startles him; it is the voice he gained with the conclusion of puberty, when all the cracks and squeaks settled into smooth expressiveness, rather than the roughness of age and harsh living.  It is also, strangely, the factor that brings everything into focus: he has a body, a _young_ body, breathing the sterile air of the melting pit below Theed Palace.  He is either having the strangest flashback in existence or he has gone back in time.  He’s not sure which is the more daunting prospect.

Well, Obi-Wan will panic later.  Right now, there is something—or rather _someone_ —more important to attend to.

Obi-Wan scrambles to his Master’s side, ignoring the reluctance of his limbs to move with such speed after combat.  If he was truly in the past, this body would not yet be accustomed to such extended exertion, but he could not make allowances for his body’s weakness, not now.  Not with his dying Master so close.

Obi-Wan kneels beside Qui-Gon, lifting the older man’s head into his lap.  His Master smiles up at him.

“Obi-Wan—the boy, Anakin.  He is the Chosen One.  You must train him.” Qui-Gon insists breathlessly.

Obi-Wan is frozen.  He’d…well, honestly he’d forgotten just how devastating those words had been the first time, and now they only served to rip open the barely-healed wounds in his heart.  Train Anakin?  Force, not again…he couldn’t handle reliving his failures, and the innocent boy his friend once was deserved better than the broken man Obi-Wan had become.  Anakin needed someone who could look him in the eyes without recalling him burning on the shores of a river of lava screaming hatred.  Yet, if Obi-Wan did not train him, who would?  And flawed though they both may have been, Obi-Wan could not imagine his life without the man Anakin would become by his side.  He owed the boy that man had been better than an uncertain future or, worse, a future in Sidious’ hands.  So, making the only choice he could, Obi-Wan nodded.

A look of relief—and was that pride?—entered Qui-Gon’s eyes before he voiced words Obi-Wan should have remembered to expect: “I’m proud of you, Padawan.  Never forget that.”  A shaking hand gently brushed Obi-Wan’s cheek.

Obi-Wan’s eyes filled with tears.  In the long years spent on Tatooine, he had discussed this moment with his teacher’s ghost, and had come to learn that Qui-Gon had intended to speak those words all along but had been forestalled by death; this time, Obi-Wan had defeated Maul swiftly enough to grant them those precious extra moments.  Yet, knowing this was a possibility did not prepare Obi-Wan for the emotional impact of hearing those words in the correct moment.  

For decades upon decades, Obi-Wan had regretted never truly knowing if Qui-Gon had forgiven him, or even liked him, after the tumultuous events of his apprenticeship.  In his worst moments, he had been convinced he had done nothing but disappoint his teacher, doubting even the times they had seemed to act as one.  Qui-Gon had been his Master for less than a quarter of his life, but was by far one of the most influential people in it.  To hear those words spoken after a lifetime of sorrow and regret…well, Obi-Wan imagines the only thing that would be more potent a balm to his heart is Anakin’s forgiveness.

“I love you, Master,” Obi-Wan whispers, finally, after all the pain he had known, able to speak the words his actions had always shouted but would not pass his lips.

As the life fades from Qui-Gon’s eyes, Obi-Wan cries.  It took a nineteen-year exile and the death or despair of everyone he had ever known to accomplish it, but he had learned to express his pain.  And though he knows he will see his Master again, the loss is still as painful as the first.  But he is not weeping for Qui-Gon alone; his tears are for losses that have in one sense been undone, for Anakin, Padmé, Satine, Ahsoka, Siri, Bant, Garen, Reeft, Bail, and all the others he loved and lost since this moment the first time around are well and safe, but at the same time remain—for without the shared memories they have yet to make, are they truly the same people, the same friends?  So Obi-Wan lets the tears fall for the people they were and yet may not become.

An indefinite amount of time passes—it cannot be too long, for Maul shows no sign of stirring, but his Master’s body has lost all warmth save where Obi-Wan clings—before it occurs to Obi-Wan that the security recording may have picked up his musings about the relative ease of this fight against the Sith apprentice and certainly captured his change in skill in the short instant between Qui-Gon’s mortal wounding and the ray shield dropping.  The Council would want to review the footage, to witness the Sith’s fighting style firsthand and determine both what led to Qui-Gon’s death and the method of the Sith’s defeat.  The shift to Soresu and the skill of Obi-Wan’s disarmament of Maul would look at least mildly suspicious—and there was also the question of what exactly to do with a live, captured Sith—but for now Obi-Wan simply gives a watery smile.

 For all that Obi-Wan had placed his hope in Luke, he had not felt truly, full-heartedly hope _ful_ since before the start of the Clone Wars, yet in this moment he thinks that maybe, just maybe, there is a chance that everything will turn out alright this time around.


End file.
